


Our First Time At Being Real.

by theatergirl06



Series: Snapshots of The First Ones. [3]
Category: Six - Marlow/Moss
Genre: Araleyn, F/F, aralyn - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-07
Updated: 2020-05-07
Packaged: 2021-03-02 19:01:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,552
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24051754
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theatergirl06/pseuds/theatergirl06
Summary: They've confirmed their love for each other. But now what?
Relationships: Anne Boleyn/Catherine of Aragon
Series: Snapshots of The First Ones. [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1701961
Comments: 1
Kudos: 53





	Our First Time At Being Real.

**Author's Note:**

> TW: Swearing.

Anne could admit she didn’t know the first thing about real relationships. She hadn’t dated anyone since Henry, and that had been unhealthy to say the least. She knew she had no idea what she was doing, or how to flirt with someone you were already dating.

Of course, Catherine was probably going through all the same things. She’d never been in a healthy relationship, either. But Catherine was...awesome. She was strong. She was clever. She was wise.

In short, she was everything Anne wasn’t.    
Even after the drunken night on the roof, even after that amazing Sunday morning by the Loveboat, she was _ still  _ dealing with problems and confusion and anxiety. 

Why couldn’t everything just be all sunshine and rainbows now? Hadn’t they earned that?

But  _ no _ , they had to be  _ real  _ now. They had to plan dates and do couple things. It was what they were supposed to do. 

Anne had absolutely zero idea of how to do any of that.

One Wednesday night after a particularly tiring show, Anne found herself in Kat’s room, pacing around on her soft rugs as her younger cousin perched on the end of the bed and braided a small portion of her hair. And she found herself asking for  _ a lot  _ of relationship advice.

“Kat, how do you go from first kisses to...dating and being a couple?”

Kat laughed and pressed play on her phone as upbeat guitar music filled the room. “Are you sure I’m the best person to ask? I’m not exactly a love guru.”

Anne sighed and flopped down onto the bed, her hair spilling out onto the pillows. “Yeah, but you’re like...dating Anna, and you guys have been dating since the 1500s.”

“We have not been dating since the 1500s, Anne.”

“Well, technically, no.”

“We were friends. Then we were friends again. Then we were dating. Pretty simple.”   
“If you call the process of reincarnation simple.”

Kat flopped down onto the soft pillows, her hair overlapping with Anne’s. “Look, I don’t pretend to know everything about love. But I think part of what made me and Anna work is that we were such good friends before. We did a lot of the same stuff, just with some...different things mixed in.”

Anne wiggled her eyebrows. “And by ‘different things,’ you mean…”

“Shut up.”

“I’m just saying!”   
“Look, the point is that you don’t have to stress about making everything different and special. Dating doesn’t half to change everything, in fact, it shouldn’t.”

Anne grinned. “Wise advice from the love guru.”

“I am not a love guru.”   
“Well, you give good advice.”

“Thank you!”

“Don’t let it go to your head, it’s only because you’ve been in love for five hundred years.”   
“ I thought we already established that I have not been in love for five hundred years.”   
“We established that I have not been in love for five hundred years.”

“We established that you have not been  _ dating  _ since the 1500s. We never said anything about you being in love.”

Kat sighed. “I’m never going to convince you, am I?”   
“Never.”

There was another pause. The guitar music continued to play, and Anne recognized it as one of Cathy’s playlists.    
“So your advice to me is to act normal and be more chill?”

“Like I said, not the love guru.”

“But I suck at being chill. I’ve never been chill. I painted my shelf gold so my heelys would get proper appreciation and recognition.”

Katherine rolled over onto her stomach. “Well, I guess that’s something you might have to think about.”

By the next night, the night that was technically supposed to be their “first date,” seeing as they were both off from the show, Anne was still thinking about it.    
She took another glance in the mirror. Despite it technically being Spring, it was still chilly out. She had on a forest green turtleneck (it was cashmere and she loved it), a short black denim skirt, black tights, and black boots. Black gems sprinkled in her ears, and of course, she was wearing her usual mini space buns.

She hoped she looked cute, but she knew something was missing. She plucked a lime green scarf out of her closet and grinned. 

Perfect.

She walked down the stairs, attempting to look nonchalant and chill. God, how did Anna and Cathy do it so easily?

Of course, all of her attempts at being calm and chill flew out the window the second she caught sight of Catherine. The woman seemed to literally be glowing. Her suit was a deep burnt orange with gold woven in. The thin tank top she wore underneath was a yellow so pale it was almost white. Her gold heels added at least an inch to her formidable height, and her earrings shone like miniature suns.

Anne almost fell down the stairs.

God, she was gorgeous. Really, really gorgeous.

Anne wanted to fall into her arms that very second. 

But instead, she tried to play it cool. That was what couples did, right? 

It was only now that she realized she probably should have asked Katherine for a bit more clarity about what she’d meant. After all, not changing everything from a friendship didn’t apply. Anne and Catherine hadn’t exactly been best friends before.

So she’d taken that to mean “chill.” But was that wrong?

Ugh, all this worrying and second-guessing and she’d only been in the same room as Catherine for about a minute at most.    
Dating was stressful as fuck.

She gave the Spanish queen a grin as she descended the last two steps. She tried her best to look graceful, but her high heel (she  _ was  _ wearing high heeled boots, after all), caught on the edge of one of the bottom steps, and she nearly fell on her face before regaining her balance.

She laughed, trying to cover up her nerves.

“Wow, I’m really off my game tonight. Guess it’s a good thing I’m not at the show, then. I’ll bet nobody wants to see that.”

Awkward silence filled the room. Anne felt like slapping herself. Catherine gave a nervous laugh, but slipped her fingers around Anne’s as she did so, making hot energy shoot rapidly up and down Anne’s spine.

It basically did the opposite of helping her calm down. 

But Anne squashed her nerves during the taxi ride to the tiny little Italian place they’d found, and she squashed her nerves as they sat down at the table and began to glance at the menus.

But of course, she was Anne Boleyn. Her nerves never stayed squashed for long.

“Oh, did you see they have calamari on the menu?”

“Yeah, I did…?”

“That’s squid, you know that?”

“Yeah, I sort of thought everybody knew that.”

“Oh, well, uh…” Anne struggled to find the right words as she felt her face growing redder and redder.

Catherine reached across the table and gently placed her left hand on Anne’s wrist. It was warm and soft against her skin. “Anne, you can’t keep doing this.”

Anne tried to hide her blushing face, which was becoming increasingly redder by the second. “Doing what?”

“Getting so nervous.” The Spanish queen placed her wine glass down on their little table and sighed. “Look, I get it. We don’t know how to date at all. We don’t even really know how to be each other’s friends or even understand these weird feelings. But I want this to work, and for that to happen, we can’t be scared.” She took a deep breath. “I was scared, too. I even went to Anna for advice, but she just told me to ‘be more chill,’ whatever that means. But I realized that being scared wasn’t going to make this any better.”

Anne sighed. “I don’t want to make this worse. It’s just...I’ve wanted this for so long without even realizing it. Now that it’s finally happened, I just don’t want to screw everything up.”

Catherine slid her other hand across the table and wove Anne’s fingers through her own. “Believe it or not, I’m pretty sure you could never mess anything up.”

“Catherine, please. I appreciate the gesture, but you’ve seen me in the kitchen. I am the  _ queen  _ of messing shit up.”   
Catherine laughed, genuinely this time, and it made Anne smile.

“Well, you haven’t messed this up.”

“Yet.”

“What makes you so sure I’m incapable of messing shit up?”

“You’re not. You’re just really good at hiding it.”

“Not from you, apparently.”

“Well, I’m special.”

“That’s one word for it.”

“What else would you call it?”

“Well, Boleyn, I’d say you definitely keep me on my toes.”

“Of course I do. It’s my job.”

There was silence again at their table, but it wasn’t an awkward silence anymore. This silence was warm and fuzzy and full of love.

It wasn’t a perfect silence. Anne was still nervous, her hands were sweaty, before this night was over, she’d probably say something stupid and make everything awkward again.   
But Catherine knew she was nervous. She knew there were going to be bumps in the road. She knew not everything was going to be perfect.

But she was willing to try this anyway. And that was enough.

Not bad for a first real date. Not bad at all.


End file.
